On Wednesday, a 33-year-old ex-teacher with a history of mental illness stabbed 15 children at a primary school in Leizhou, in Guangdong Province.

On Thursday, a 47-year-old unemployed man stabbed 28 children and 3 adults at a kindergarten in Jiangsu Province, on China’s east coast just south of Shandong.

Continuing a bizarre series of attacks on Chinese schoolchildren, a man broke into a primary school in eastern China on Friday and beat five preschool children with a hammer before setting himself afire, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

WTF indeed.

The crimes are believed to be copycats of the March 23 knife attack at a school in Fujian Province that left eight children dead. The perpetrator of that attack, 42-year-old Zheng Minsheng, was executed, as it so happens, on Wednesday (they move fast like that in China). Both Zheng and Wednesday’s attacker, Chen Kangbing, had known histories of mental illness. Mental illness is still something that the country is in denial about (and, undoubtedly, ashamed over). From the same NYT piece:

Mental illness remains a closeted topic in modern China, and neither medication nor modern psychiatric treatment is widely used. An analysis of mental health issues in four Chinese provinces, published in June in the British medical journal The Lancet, estimated that 91 percent of the 173 million Chinese adults that are believed to suffer mental problems never receive professional help.

6 Responses to “WTF News: Third Attack On Chinese Schoolchildren In Three Days”

Injuring and killing children is far more shameful than acknowledging that mental illness exsists. This is an issue that needs to bee addressed immediately! As a mother, these stories make me especially sick.

Can we throw in the possibility that for many families this is their ONLY child? How terrifying to learn your child has been attacked and even killed. So very tragic.

The only “positive” note here may be that, at least, now the news of such events actually gets out of China. Hopefully that will be more shameful than not acknowledging and helping the mentally ill. Shameful enough to do something.